Five debut authors. Five books. One big dance toward publication.

Italy

Calling Debut Authors! Now Accepting Applications for the 2018 Debutante Ball! Read this post to learn more. Hurry! The deadline is July 28! This week the Debs are sharing things about themselves that might be weird, strange or that most people might not know. I’ve been blogging for a long time, nearly since blogging was a thing. In 2005 I was especially prolific and my “About Me” page was a crazy list…

I am delighted to welcome one of my Touchstone Books sisters, Melodie Winawer, to the Deb Ball. We both have books set in Italy and have a curiosity and love for cooking history. Her novel, THE SCRIBE OF SIENA, is her first, but what a fantastic first it is! I loved this time-travel, medieval Italian tale with its trifecta of love, science and art, combining together for some fantastic historical fiction….

If you’ve been following along this week, you know that we’ve been in the kitchen wiping up delicious ancient roman meals from Crystal’s fabulous cookbook, inspired by FEAST OF SORROW. When Crystal first approached us with this idea, I jumped at the chance to make a fool out of myself becoming Chef boyardT, especially since I LOVEEEEEE Italian food. Ten years ago, I spent an entire month in Italy, traveling…

This week the Debs are singing songs from the Sound of Music…wait, no, that’s just Deb Crystal. But we are talking about some of our favorite things–the things that make us happy, that make us smile, that make us laugh. The Roman orator and philosopher, Seneca, once said, “True happiness is… to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future.” I’m not always good about the anxious dependence part, but…

This week the Debs are writing about hobbies, trips or other types of activities that tie into our books or our writing. When I met my husband 16 years ago, I got lucky. Upon entering into his life I also had the great fortune to get to know his mother, Rosie, who is second generation Italian. She speaks the dialect of her parents, who were from a little hill town in…

This week’s Deb topic is about Confessions! Each of us are sharing something unknown, something hidden about us, our books or our writing process. Today I am going to confess. All the sins of my past, the wayward thoughts and actions that led me astray. It might not be pretty. Feel free to turn your head away or cover up that smirk. I still managed to spit out a 418…

Well, it’s here. THE DAY has arrived. I’m a published author. I’ve now checked off bucket list item #34 – Write a novel and get it published. The book is out in the wild…which means people are reading it. (Thank you!) People I don’t know. Which is thrilling. And scary. And awesome. And scary. (Wait, did I already say that?) And through it all I’m a complex mix of excited, exhilarated, and exhausted,…

When my husband was reading an early draft of COME AWAY WITH ME, it wasn’t long before he turned to me and asked, “So, I’m Gabe, right?” (Yes, but only the good parts, naturally …*wink wink*) Gabe is fictional, of course he is. But there is a lot of my husband in him – from expressions he uses, to moments we’ve had together, to the song Gabe sings and plays…

It’s fitting that our theme this week is I Want to Learn, as I had the good fortune of meeting today’s guest author, John Grisham, while in pursuit of something I had long wanted to learn, Italian. John has wisely parlayed his Italian experience into books set in Italia: first, his bestselling novel, The Broker, and now–in a departure from the legal thrillers with which we’ve come to associate the…